


On Monsters Fair And Fearsome

by twofoldAxiom



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Additional Warnings Apply, Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Beauty and the Beast Elements, Fairy Tale Curses, Fairy Tale Elements, Fairy Tale Retellings, Humanstuck, M/M, Warnings May Change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-30
Updated: 2018-10-30
Packaged: 2019-08-10 01:05:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16460519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twofoldAxiom/pseuds/twofoldAxiom
Summary: Your name is Karkat Vantas, once an apprentice village witch, now fleeing the burnt remnants of your home as a civil war ravages the countryside. But the forest you've fled to holds more than wolves and trees, as you find yourself nearly run down by a hungry shadow, chased into an enchanted palace.Night within the estate is day beyond, ghosts roam the echoing halls, and the only living inhabitant is its cursed, ruthless prince. Anyone else would be doomed to join those ghosts, but you're determined to find a way out.





	On Monsters Fair And Fearsome

**Author's Note:**

> So this is based on an old-ass homestuck/Beauty And The Beast RP I did back in like... early 2017, I think? I don't really remember. It didn't get very far, all I really managed to make up was that Karkat was a witch fleeing civil war, and a few other details that are spoilers, but we didn't actually get to the whole Beauty And The Beast bit for real.
> 
> Hopefully I can follow up the What Could Have Been with this story. I hope you enjoy this first chapter! (And I'm sorry that I'm _probably_ going to start something so soon, because NaNo is coming up.)

_"When I was young, a very long time ago, I lived in a town much like this one and there was a young hunter much like you, and he was the best hunter in the town."_

_"Great hunters come by the dozen, with a dozen more to replace them. None will be a witch like I am." You said, a child's boast. Sheepish under your grandfather's gaze, you pressed on. "But maybe... Was he handsome? Was he brave?"_

_You knew you weren't handsome. Your face was stained with ash from the fireplace and dirt from the roads, and your grandfather's was stained with the lines of age and the soot of burning herbs. Both of you looked sad and grey at this time of night, when the world had gone to sleep. But his eyes shone when he told these stories to you, and when you asked your questions about them; not like when you asked questions about where your brother had gone, or the distant murmurs of war beyond the forests around your home._

_Your grandfather smiled. "He didn't need to be those things. He just needed to be clever."_

You stop dozing to the sound of thunder, swearing for a moment that the flash of lightning was an exploding artillery shell. Every breath stings with the cold, foggy twilight, dim and eerie all around you, and your stolen horse tosses her proud head with a snort of warm vapor. Thunder rumbles again, and the rain begins to rattle the leaves. You scrub your sorry face of tears.

You miss your grandfather. You miss everyone. But home burned to the ground two nights ago, and all your family with it.

At any rate, it's just as well that you woke up. Daydreaming of the dead on your horse, especially a stolen horse, could have you turned around from where you're headed. Not that you know where you're headed, just that you're headed away from the remnants of home.

At least the mare you're riding seems to have a fondness for you, so far as you can tell. You've named her Grizella, and she answers to it well enough. You've been riding two days now, and she was skittish when you'd stolen her from the town lord's stable, but telling her the fate of the other horses eased her along. Not that you were sure she could understand a word. You never were good with animals.

She whinnies and tosses her head again, and satisfied that you're paying attention, continues clopping along the road. You can only really tell it's a road because the trees bend down at the edges of it, here. You half expect that you've been turned around already, that you're going to pass the next ridge and be faced with charred, trampled ground.

You shiver again, drawing your cloak tighter around your shoulders, blowing on your hands. You pray for a town, or a border outpost. You could bargain for shelter with news of Tashrus, with news of the civil war spreading this far into the smallest, most distant towns, or you could barter what little magic you know for a meal and a map. Soldiers always need a little more luck, and that's all you have left.

Your name is Karkat Vantas and you're a sorry excuse for a village witch. Even sorrier now that you don't have a village to be a witch for.

It's a miserable state of affairs.

"We'll rest properly soon, I promise." You murmur in her ear, rubbing your hand along her broad, brown neck. "Just keep going until you find people, or a house. Any kind of house will do."

She snorts in response, ears flattened backwards. The thunder rumbles again, and this time it's followed by a gust of wind, bitingly cold. You swear you see white in it, snow pushed off the high branches, maybe, or the beginnings of a snow storm.

"Fuck." You mutter. There's a sigil in your cloak for safety and you mutter against the stitching, pressing it to your lips to spark it with a kiss.

You feel it pull you forward, a hook in the back of your guts. You hate this spell, you don't know where it will take you except for what you told it to. But you asked for safety and shelter, and that's the best you can do in these conditions. The wind picks up and so do you.

~!~

You try to remember your grandfather's stories as a kind of comfort in this, but the words won't come. Nothing comes to you but the smell of your home burning to the ground, even as you sped away on a panicking horse. You remember, vividly, the bright fire on the hillside before you turned away into the woods, the stink of ash and tar that wouldn't leave your clothes and hair.

You would almost trade the horror of that night for the cold you feel now, just for some warmth. It feels like forever that you and Grizella have been going through the snow. It's coming down just about sideways in white, stinging sheets, even through the trees, and the thunder cracks so hard it shakes your bones.

You cling to Grizella's mane and try to bear the biting cold, but you're soaked to the bone and you imagine she isn't doing much better. If you die out here of the cold, it'll be a miserable death indeed.

" _Fuck._ " You mutter again, a little harsher, as if it might help. It doesn't, of course; and as if to answer you, the wind howls so hard it nearly tears your cloak off your shoulders, the only guide you have in this white oblivion. You glare up at the sky and start murmuring a spell to gather the warmth in your skin, under your cloak, and gather it tighter in your shaking hands.

Not enough of course. Never enough. Grizella snorts, and it's only the warmth of her breath that keeps you from slipping off her, even when it chills again a second later. Are you imagining the howl of the wind is the howl of wolves? The chatter of your teeth the sound of paws beating the snow underfoot?

The shadows grow long and loathsome, and you swear you see the glow of yellowy eyes in the gloom, feel their snarling breath on the back of your neck. You shake it off.

Until you can't, because Grizella whinnies, rears suddenly; you almost fall off. Something speeds across your line of sight and fear curdles in your gut. The howl of the wind- no, it's not wind now.

And no wolf either.

A snarl at your back is all it takes.

"Go, now!" You just about shriek into the grey-white air, your breath swirling past your lips like a ghost as Grizella, too, finds it in her to follow your command. You practically have to wrench her to the side with your body's own weight, away from the jaws of whatever monster is before you, and then she's galloping through the trees with the shadow of something huge and  snarling over your shoulder.

You feel it catch the edge of your cloak and you choke as it snaps it right off. The wind is twice- thrice- colder without what little protection it affords. But your spell holds even without it in place- a bright, burning line in your mind's eye, in your heart's straining grip, leading you forward. 

Grizella very nearly veers away from the path you feel and it nearly tears you from her back until you right her course. It's an urgent, terrible thing, almost as much as the monster chasing you.

Is the monster something of yours? Is that part of the spell?

You hear it whisper your name and decide, fuck it, it doesn't matter if it is. You don't want whatever it has for you. You kick your heels into Grizella's sides and feel her pound the ground faster, almost in time with the frenzied beat of your heart. The air stings in your throat and feels like the tracks of frosty little claws across your exposed cheeks, hot with pain now. You squint through the snow and swear your tears freeze on your lashes in your fear, so much so that you must be hallucinating.

There's a bridge up ahead, and a lightless gate, dripping with icicles. It's coming closer dizzyingly fast. The monster behind you reaches out with spindle-thin fingers, clutching at the ends of your hair.

You're not going to make it through, there's no time to pray that someone is behind the gate and so much as willing to open it for you.

Until Grizella's hooves meet the rotten wood of the bridge, and suddenly you're hit with light and heat so sharp and bright you scream.

It shocks Grizella too, whatever it is; but you feel her rear and the shadow pulls back, pulls away from you, you cling to Grizella's neck and feel the shadow recede but your heart is thumping like a rabbit's running from a fox. You squint into the terrible brightness and realize you're out of the trees, and the sky overhead is endlessly blue, streaked with pale, gauzy clouds.

Grizella's hooves hit the bridge again, and you don't even hear it creak. Slowly, slowly, you peel your eyes open as you get used to the light, and you take it all in, wherever this is that you are.

You smell flowers. Roses. The air is thick and heavy with their perfume. You hear birdsong and the gentle hum of bees, and the lazy burble of a stream, the thud and grind of a waterwheel. The day is bright and hot, stinging your wretched, frostbitten self with all the intensity of Midsummer. Under Grizella's stomping hooves, the wood of the bridge is strong, and overlaid with a dense, verdant layer of vines.

Are you dreaming?

You're dripping with slowly-melting snow. You can't be dreaming, and still you can't believe it.

The gate swings open before you. 

"This isn't..." You mutter to yourself, as you dismount. "This can't be real."

But the wood feels real underfoot. You dip your fingers into the stream and recoil when you find it sun-warmed on the surface and cool beneath. When you look behind you, you see the treeline, and not a hint of white in the greenery. But you see the shadows between the boughs, the promise of darkness in them. The whispering memory of your name rings cold and terrible in the back of your mind. The sunlight isn't so forbidding after something like that.

You look at Grizella. She seems happy enough to accept whatever this is as something real. You still don't want to, but what other options do you have? Standing out here like an idiot?

You're wary as you move, as if any moment now, the ground will swallow you up, as you take her reins and place one step after another. Looking forward, past the gate, you see a castle. A palace, rather; shining white and perfect, with vine trellises and balconies and all those things that belong in palaces far away from your home, maybe in the capital. But this is the middle of nowhere, all you see are gardens, and distantly, forests and hills.

Another footstep, and the ground fails to swallow you whole. 

You breathe, but only just enough to steel yourself for anything worse that may come, as your feet leave the bridge and meet the mosaic-paved path leading forward. It branches at either side into the impossibly lush gardens, and you expect someone to materialize out of the thick greenery and tell you that you're dead or lost, or that you have to go back into the forest and whatever might be waiting for you there.

Nobody comes, though. Sweat trickles down your brow now that you aren't so frozen, and the blood's come pounding back to the tips of your fingers and toes, making each step agony on the sun-warmed stones under the thin soles of your shoes. You may as well be walking on hot coals as you shade your eyes from the noonday sun (and that's all wrong, too; it was twilight when you found yourself lost, so it couldn't even be morning, could it?)

You pass under an archway of roses, so thick it almost makes a canopy, and then you make it to the wide, wooden doors of the palace, at least, sighing in relief in the scant shade of the building itself. But looking up at it, it doesn't ease you so much up close. These doors are downright forbidding, with strange metal inlays weaving in and out of the wood. You can see shapes in them: Vines, flowers, people, animals. Strange discs like toothy suns.

That the metal is perfectly polished is even stranger. You can see yourself reflected in one of the elaborately engraved discs, like a brass mirror.

Before you can touch one, even as you have a hand raised to do so, the doors move with a sound of groaning hinges and whirring machinery, and you stumble back. You're shocked at the comparative darkness of the palace within, a cool breeze rushing past you, tousling your hair. Grizella whinnies at your side and runs off somewhere into the gardens before you can stop her, leaving you standing alone at the threshold.

You stare after her, and then you stomp one foot like an angry child, because nobody can see you and you've had a long day.

"Fine! Okay! That may as well _fucking_ happen, right? You'd better come back instead of breaking your leg over a fucking fence!" You yell after her, because you're tired and sore and you know you'll never make it to chase after her. You rub your temples and then the sweat from your forehead before it can get in your eyes, and turn to face the empty hall that you're facing. 

The vaulted ceiling is so high overhead you see birds flitting between the arches, when you tilt your head back. Bright frescoes dance across the ceiling, and the walls are inlaid with more machinery, moving now as the doors pull all the way to the sides before stopping just shy of the walls. You hear the hiss of steam and realize that must be what's powering the doors.

Not entirely a fairy palace, then, but you look down at your shadow where it stains the carpet, rich violet that must have taken a year's worth of foreign dyes to take so dark and even a color, and you wonder to yourself where the _fuck_ everyone is. There's nobody in sight who could have operated the doors, just a long hallway leading deeper into this place with paintings in the gaps where the mechanisms leave the walls blank.

"Ahem."

Until there _is_ , apparently. A tall man stands before you in a frock coat a hundred years too old in style and looking like it was tailored yesterday. He raises a sharply-penciled eyebrow at you, spindle-thin fingers folded at his middle. You stare, looking to either side for a door he must have come through.

"Excuse me."

His voice catches you like it's right next to your ear, even though he's right in front of you. His thin lips press tight, narrow eyes looking you over. You note they don't match; one gleams midnight blue, the other one stark  _red_. 

You don't find a door.

And he's looking at you with more scrutiny than you've ever seen in your life. In your patchy jacket, your cape, your travel-worn everything, you feel like it's laughable that he might not slam the doors in your face, figuratively if not literally. He locks eyes with you and you almost, almost, take a step back.

"I suppose you're looking for shelter from the heat, on your way somewhere. We don't get many travelers these days." He says. Yes, of course, and your tongue is sticking to the roof of your mouth in your silence, until he glances away from you and into the gardens behind you. "Will you be needing your horse to get where you're going?"

What kind of a question is that? You finally unstick your tongue in your confusion. "I don't know where I'm going, but I'll definitely need the horse. I also need to figure out where I am, first of all, because I'm pretty sure it was the middle of goddamn winter before I got on the bridge back there. You have any idea what that's about?"

He looks pained, and then angry, and the resigned. 

"Yes, I do." He says, in a way that you can _feel_ means _I can't or won't tell you despite the fact that I know._ He flicks his head towards the long hallway behind him instead, fingers still folded. "Follow me inside. We'll get you cleaned up, and you can tell me what you have to trade to stay long enough to get your bearings."

He doesn't say _if you have enough_  or even ask if you have money. But you suppose you don't look like you'd have money, to someone like him. He sees you hesitate at the edge of the carpet and his sharp face softens just slightly.

"It won't be up to me or you if you stay or leave." He says. "It will be up to what you can do for the prince. But pray you don't have to meet him so soon."

With a warning like that, you really want to turn around, but you can't see your horse and you still remember the forest, even if that, now, feels like a dark and distant dream. 

You gulp, taking a step inside. The carpet doesn't make a sound underfoot.


End file.
